Easy Folk Art Tree

Copyright Arizona Kate 2000 All rights reserved.
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This tutorial was written as a companion to the Easy Leaf Tube tutorial, a guide for making your own custom Picture Tube in Paint Shop Pro. We will use the simple leaf created in that tutorial to create this tree, but, if you prefer, you could use another leaf tube. This is a quick & easy, beginner level tutorial.


Supplies needed to create the tree are PSP (v.5, 6 or 7) and a leaf tube.

Open new image

Select 'transparent' background or a color that matches your webpage. Canvas size 200x200 and 16 mil colors.

Create new layer (TREE)

Create a new layer for tree by clicking the layer icon on your layer palette and selecting new raster layer. Name each layer as you go. It's a good habit to get into!

Select a brown for stroke/foreground color. This will be the 'tree trunk' color.

Using the Line/Draw tool, draw a straight line for the trunk.
Select these settings in the Tool Options box:
Solid, single Line, size 14, antialias ON, vector OFF
Hold the shift key down as your draw your line to get a perfectly straight line.

Change the Line/Draw tool to freehand line, size 5 and loosely draw some branches. Think of the branches as looking like the veins on a leaf. Some will branch out from the main trunk and some will branch from other branches! As you can see in the screenshot above, it is not necessary to be real accurate. Any lines that don't connect....we'll just cover with leaves!! ;-)

Create a new layer (LEAVES)

Using the leaf tube made in the Easy Leaf Tube tutorial or another leaf tube, paint a bunch of leaves on the branches. If necessary, change scale of leaf tube (in Tool Options box) to suit the size of your trunk. Using the Tube brush, first paint a half circle of leaves around the top of the branches by clicking and moving your mouse around. You can always UNDO if you get too many!! Start filling in the area with more leaves, overlapping the branches here and there and where the branches meet the trunk.

Don't forget to leave some holes for the birds to fly through!!!

Paint Shop Pro 7 comes with a "lawn" tube. Use this tube to place some grass at the bottom of your tree as I did for the tree at the top of the page. You will probably have to change the scale of the tube to a smaller size. If you don't have the tube, just draw some green lines for grass as I did in the image below. It always looks nice to add some leafy shadows under the tree. For the tree below, which is a little more realistic than the one above, I've also added some highlights and shadows to the trunk.

Save & Optimize

Merge all layers (layers > merge all) and export as gif (file > export > GIF optimizer).

In the GIF Optimizer dialog box, you can preview the image as you select transparency, method of color reduction and other format options from each of the tabbed pages. If you're unfamiliar with these choices, you can click the "Use Wizard" button and let PSP guide you through the optimization process.

To see how the different methods of color reduction effect the colors in your image, zoom in on the preview box and compare the 2 images very closely. The one on the left is your original...the one on the right is optimized. Some optimization choices will create an uneven, undesirable, colorization. If this happens, adjust the settings on each tab until you reach the best compromise between image quality and optimized file size. View the "Download Times" tab to estimate the speed with which your file will display on web.

Either the GIF, JPEG, or PNG Optimizer should be used for every image you save for use on the web. When I'm in doubt about which format I should use, I'll view each Optimizer to see which file format gives me the best quality with the smallest file size.

Try making some more trees that are shaped a little different or have different leaves. You could also create some new tubes to make a tree with Autumn leaves or to make a specific tree....like an Apple Tree!! Have fun!!